Dystopian Rhapsody

Between concrete and chaos, asphalt and asphyxiation, fractured dreams and fleeting promise, this urban poetics takes shape — forged in sweat, shadow, and subversion. Rather than decoding or romanticizing the city, the poem and photographs gathered here move through it — not as answers, but as gestures of attention. They are fragments of a lived experience marked by an errant flow, where text and image do not operate as escape, but as tools for perception and critique. Resisting the numbing rhythm of daily life, they seek to unearth meaning beneath the asphalt and offer lyricism to the cracks where resilience still flickers — however ephemeral.

In a world increasingly dominated by the pursuit of productivity, success, and curated happiness, this body of work proposes an alternative mode of seeing: one that listens. It invites a sensory immersion into the unstable, dissonant everyday of São Paulo — one of the world’s most vast and complex urban environments. Over the course of four years wandering the city, camera and word allied to reveal external and internal vertigos in an unplanned path, guided by friction and encounter.

Dystopian Rhapsody unfolds as a kaleidoscopic investigation into the visual and social dichotomies of contemporary urban life. Drawing inspiration from the concept of rhapsody — a composition characterized by fragmentation, improvisation, and affect — the work oscillates between documentary impulse and poetic intuition. A chronicle that challenges social norms and artistic conventions, exposing the decline of utopian ideals in the modern world.

The pulsating life within this city — dynamic and volatile — serves myriad interests, yet its indigestible nature presents challenges at every corner. These images reveal the incongruities of urban polarities, the allure of consumerism, unrealized dreams, and the creativity that emerges in response to adversity.

The dilemmas confronted here resonate with those found in countless other cities around the world — narratives, experiences, and perspectives that transcend borders.

The city is body. It is ruin. It is pulse.
And poetry is what remains, when all else falters.